HireGun

Inspiration

I launched HireGun in early 2013 because I was quitting freelance consulting but still had a lot of leads. Instead of just giving them away, I wondered if I could sell them. As soon as I sold the first one, I bought the domain name and hosting. Since then I've done a few deals per month, and in two weeks between my old and current jobs I tripled traffic and deal flow.

How it works

Businesses looking for a marketing consultant (SEO, social media, paid, content) come to HireGun and submit their information. I follow up with them personally, then once I have the information needed I contact consultants that I think would be a good match.

Challenges I ran into

Scaling is difficult in a marketplace. HireGun benefited early on from my connections within the marketing industry, but dealflow has been the challenge because I have not had time to figure out the different referral schemes needed to scale the business. I am also not an engineer, so designing systems to automate a lot of this process has been a challenge.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

1) that the business model works
2) HireGun has filled up agency pipelines
3) Consistent traffic, consistent leads

What I learned

1) Scaling is hard
2) I cannot do it alone
3) There is demand for this kind of business

What's next for HireGun

1) Increasing dealflow
2) Helping agencies/consultants close more business